Claudia Black - Deceived: Facing the Trauma of Sexual Betrayal

Deceived

CLAUDIA BLACK

Deceived

Facing the Trauma
of Sexual Betrayal

LAS VEGAS

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2009, 2019 by Claudia Black

All rights reserved. First Edition published 2009. New Edition published 2019.

Published 2019. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Black, Claudia, author.

Title: Deceived : facing the traumas of sexual betrayal / Claudia Black.

Description: Revised and updated edition. | Las Vegas : Central Recovery Press, [2019] | Revised edition of the authors Deceived, 2009. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019006210 (print) | LCCN 2019013343 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949481099 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949481082 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Women--Psychology. | Men--Sexual behavior. | Betrayal--Psychological aspects. | Adultery--Psychological aspects.

Classification: LCC HQ1206 (ebook) | LCC HQ1206 .B445 2019 (print) | DDC 646.7/8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006210

Photo of Claudia Black by Winifred Whitfield. Used with permission.

Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders. If copyright holders have not been properly acknowledged please contact us. Central Recovery Press will be happy to rectify the omission in future printings of this book.

Publishers Note:

This book contains general information about sex addiction and its effects on relationships. The information is not medical advice. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Our books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book may have been changed.

Cover design and interior by Sara Streifel, Think Creative Design.

To the Women of the Lodge

Those who have entered the doors and begun their healing and those yet to come

May You Soar

Contents

Preface

To live with sexual betrayal is to live with deceit. Deception means to cause a person to believe what is not true, to mislead, betray, delude, or dupe. When your partner is engaging in sexual behavior that violates the values of your relationship, he will go to great lengths to conceal his behavior. In that process, his deception involves falsehood or the deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of truth.

To mislead means to lead into error, but not invariably with the intent to harm. His behavior is not intentionally meant to harm you. More likely than not he has deluded himself by believing you will never know, and if you dont know, you will not be hurt.

To betray implies a faithlessness that brings another to a disadvantage or into danger. This faithlessness puts your relationship on an unequal playing field. Instead of an equal partnership, you are set up for a one up and one down relationship, with you being the one down. Without honesty, your relationship is based on an illusion. While betrayal puts your relationship in jeopardy, it can also create physical danger for you with unsafe sex practices and/or the rage that comes from jilted lovers.

To delude is to mislead to the point of rendering another unable to detect a falsehood or make sound judgment. Your partner, as if a magician, has become a master of deception.

To dupe means to delude another by playing upon that persons susceptibility or naivet. Time after time your partner has relied on your naivet, your need to want to believe him, and your fears of what it means to know the truth.

To live like this is traumatic to your whole being.

When Deceived was first published in 2009, it was one of the first books to speak to female partners of men who were acting out sexually in an addictive manner. At that time, the language within the professional field of those working with the addicted and their partners emanated from an addiction model. While I and other early pioneers were addressing the trauma of betrayal, we did not have the language and depth of knowledge about trauma responses that have more recently been validating and critical to the partner in his or her healing. In the past few years the emphasis for healing and recovery is much more steeped in treatment that acknowledges and responds to the traumatic stress and betrayal of trust experienced by partners.

This trauma and betrayal experience is now reflected in the new subtitle for Deceived: Facing the Trauma of Sexual Betrayal. You have been deceived, time and time again, and that is traumatic to your very being. And while you are addressing the lies and secrecy that come with deception, the impact of the trauma needs to be validated and articulated. The words trauma and betrayal afford that, therefore, in this edition, I will incorporate more knowledge about trauma and trauma responses as well as changing language so that it can enhance and acknowledge the partners recovery process.

As the trauma lens has been incorporated into the treatment for partners, the phenomena of ones codependency has been challenged. Yet as you read, you will see that some of the women in this book, while recognizing their trauma, also find value in their understanding of codependency. In lieu of choosing an either/or framework, they recognize that what has occurred in their relationship has been traumatic and, for some, not all, prior to the trauma of sexual deception, they engaged in what was previously considered codependent behavior and thinking. When referring to their codependent behavior, they are referring to self-defeating behaviors they learned growing up with addiction, abuse, or an otherwise impaired family system. These behaviors included discounting their own needs, learning to not show feelings, or to not trust others. It basically says you learned certain traits as a part of your survival growing up. It was what you did to bring safety and security to your life. But to continue these behaviors in adulthood only interferes with healthy self-care and the ability to be healthy in a relationship. With that meaning, this phraseology is validating.

In my book, Unspoken Legacy: Addressing the Impact of Trauma and Addiction within the Family, published in 2018, I reframe what was learned in a troubled family as being traumatic and much of what has been identified to be codependent is in fact a trauma response. What makes the early life experiences often traumatic is that you are subject to chronically hurtful experiences at the time in your life when you are developing your sense of worth and identity.